No Ineffective Teacher Left Behind

In 2011 the Legislature enacted a tenure-reform law intended to make it practical to terminate ineffective teachers. But, this reform and others was made contingent on the development of a method to evaluate teacher effectiveness, with half of the evaluation based on student progress on state tests.

Over three years have passed since then, giving the public school establishment plenty of time to lobby the Legislature. Republicans have apparently concluded, as evidenced by Senate Bill 103, that the best they can do is to delay the evaluations until 2018-2019 — and even then, only after weakening them. Under the bill, only 22.5 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on state tests. This leaves room for potentially less-objective “local” measurements.

ForTheRecord says: Apparently, factoring in how well the students do really caught the schools and bureaucracy off guard.